JAMES TAM  谭炳昌

I, a harmless old man, new and dumb, walked into Workshop Five to commence my career as a junior prison labourer with due meekness. There was a saying among the cons: ‘Eating and sleeping well reduces the sentence by a third.’ Mmm, what if one dreams of solitary confinement in the Water Rice Hole night after night, or getting chased down the street by the police or a chopper wielding competitor?

Rehearsing death had been my therapeutic tactic for a long time. But the jail setting and a bad flu made it real.

Feels strange to be moving out of the supposedly worst jail in Hong Kong soon. I have just started to feel settled here. After the emotional tremors and aftershocks of the past week, I have a deeply irrational wish to hang on to anything familiar, even a hellhole. If I were allowed to choose, I might just stay where I am, until — until it’s time to go home for dinner...I never say 'that’s so sad' The phrase is over-uttered by too many who don’t mean it. But I do feel eerily s

Marlboro hands me a news clipping of my verdict, expecting me to get excited over my own misfortune. If Jesus were crucified today, the apostles would probably line up to show him video clips of the crucifixion as soon as he emerged from momentary death. Many See Hings are from the working class, now called grassroots -- a green and refreshing metaphor suggesting that their underfoot station is natural and inevitable.

The shower hall is chaotic like the rest of LCK, and severely flooded...being naked without a tattoo makes me feel really naked. Now, where should I put my soap. There isn’t a holder anywhere, not even a chink in the wall. The floor is three inches under water. In the mouth? What if I swallow by accident?

At Fan Tong, the Common Room, it took just a few minutes for my confidence, self esteem, judgement, and orientation to shatter...... It's a dreamland for people watching though. The perpetual circulation of inmates reminds me of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, a Jack Nicholson Classic.

Do they mean to frame and jail innocent people? Don’t think so. They probably think they’re doing the right thing, if they bother to think at all. It’s only a job, a game with simple rules for simple people to play out their assigned roles in a world they don’t understand, but too lazy or afraid to ponder. Forgive them, or turn into ashes before 27 May 2014 — a simple choice.

As I worry about security and safety in HongKong's worst hellhole, more guards show up. Don’t know how many. The silence tells me there are more than one. Unlike the duty officer, their steps are light, purposeful, and ominous. Without a word, the gate is opened. Without a word, they leave. Quietness resumes, punctuated by caterwauling, humans snoring, and the roaring of my internal furnace stoked up afresh by volatile adrenalin and dark energy.

Prison is not at all like what I had imagined

The learned judge looks fancy today, donning a yellowish springy peruke, looking like an emoji. The gallery quiets down. Everyone stands.

【Flower Lounge】 Table of Content and Chapter One -- Broken Reality. Prison was diabolically different from what I had imagined. During my first day in jail, reality broke.

Flower Lounge is 'prison' in Triad parlance. It's a true story, but a story after all. It focuses on my experience as a prisoner from the moment of conviction to eventual discharge & how I responded to the abrupt transition physically and emotionally. I've also shared selected stories of the inmates and guards, as well as some lighthearted moments. Flower Lounge made me rethink the judiciary traditions from a different angle, and the delusive nature of freedom and justice.